by James Merrill & edited by J.D. McClatchey & Stephen Yenser ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2001
Merrill’s poems read like so many distillations of life. Placed end to end, as they are here, they form a veritable...
This fat collection, skinned of notes, variations, or intrusive commentary, shows Merrill to be the most astonishing American poet since Wallace Stevens. Many of the volumes presented here in their entirety have gone out of print, and Merrill’s Selected Poems (1982) was only a slim sample of his genius. At the center of Merrill’s poetry is his voice, acrobatic and inimitable: To love Merrill is to love a tone, at once aloof and intimate, a kind of colloquial raised to the second power. Although he is often described as a confessional poet, his autobiographies, full of winks and seemingly private detail, are not burdened by catharsis. This is in part because Merrill is a comic and erotic poet, and his revelations do not presume a looming fate but come of chance weavings, of an ability to tease significance and pattern from apparently ordinary events and objects (a prismatic paperweight, Roman graffito, ginger beef). In his best poems Merrill finds ways to surprise himself, to clinch a long metaphoric conceit or twist himself free from the same (in “The Black Mesa” he ventriloquizes the hill, and concludes plaintively, “Grain by grain / Dust of my dust, when will it all be plain?”). He was also a brilliant rhymist and experimental poet, and his typographical adventures (with cross-outs, caps, elisions, and asterisks) make his pages as lively as any Shandian romp. But with all the wit and breezy conversation there is a tight, formidably intelligent logic to all of the verse; the son et lumière is carefully orchestrated, each glint and dazzle in its proper place.
Merrill’s poems read like so many distillations of life. Placed end to end, as they are here, they form a veritable metropolis of the soul.Pub Date: March 3, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-41139-9
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
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BOOK REVIEW
by James Merrill ; edited by Langdon Hammer & Stephen Yenser
BOOK REVIEW
by James Merrill & edited by J.D. McClatchy & Stephen Yenser
BOOK REVIEW
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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